What would be the price on dire wolves? 137 gp and 5 sp? That'd be a significant boost to their combat ability, and I could ride them if needed.
Not sure where you got that guess. Base minimum for things that are actually useful would be 25gp / HD (Why a Raurin horse is 75gp
Dire = higher cost. Not typically trained = higher cost.
Dire wolf would be more like 300GP.
Those hounds look pretty good. Cost to improve their hd is constant at 40gp? I might pick up a few. Limits on their hd?
As per the Advancement listing in RotW: 2-6 HD (Medium)
Could I get an Orcish master hound as an animal companion?
... I'm going to allow this. (Really, they aren't that much better than the Riding Dogs, which are an option)
Can the purchased animals or my animal companion take flaws? maybe just the ones that could reasonably effect them. ex. no Shaky for animals lacking a natural ranged attack.
I wouldn't allow it for Cohorts or flesh-puppets, so I'm going to say 'no' here too.
Anyone think I'd be better served by a more ranged focus? As it is, my only reliable ranged attack is fiery burst.
When it comes to this question, I always balk.
In
Dungeons & Dragons, you often find yourself in cramped quarters, which leads to two possibilities; You walk right into the enemies, or are otherwise auto-in melee range, thus your ranged attacks don't matter; to many people are already in the brawl that you can't squeeze in, and thus can't use your melee.
So, yeah, options are always good.
Hmm... Yeah, I guess this is the only one I can take without crying too much. Let's just hope there's no displacer beast for us out there 
Southern portion of the country. Just sayin'. Nothing drawing you there at this point though. There's enough of a fracas in Frakas.
As far as healing goes, remember, you can take 10 on healing checks, and at this point, your 10-12 on Heal would let you heal everyone 3hp every hour. So while that does increase your out-of-battle required downtime, especially between battles, and especially at this level, you're level 3.
